It’s been a long time coming. After a two-year hiatus, I’m back on track to CC it up for all y’all. So without any further ado: My very first car was “The Nightbird”, a ‘66 Ford Galaxie convertible, black over red with a white top, with the 2 bbl 390. (Note all pictures are from the Interwebs, or CC herself as I have nary one pic of this Gal.)

I bought this car for $500 from my friend “Marilyn”, who’d bought it from an old couple when living in Greenwich Village in the early eighties. She worked in my hometown pharmacy/candy store where my parents had a house credit account (remember those?) and over ten years, became family friends. Her Gal was well known around my hometown of Maplewood, New Jersey; always parked behind the movie theater in merchant parking. I passed it many times going downtown after school. Then one day it disappeared, replaced by a gray ‘85 Chevy Celebrity.

It was 1995: I’m newly permitted, and wanting a car, a classic car. I’m in Advanced Auto Shop, a program that would disappear three years later along with any other voc-tech at our formerly award-winning comprehensive public high school, wrenching on friends’ 1967 Camaros (there were TWO, a genny RS vert with the 327 2 bbl and a Powerglide, and a heavily customized god-knows-what-it-started-as with custom candy-blue paint and lake pipes), learning how to tune and diagnose carbs, lifters, etc., and all generally in awe and respect of our teacher, Bill Parker, an ASE-certified mechanic who never failed to set us in line or play classic rock all day. Being New Jersey, many of our cars had lots of rust; we got very used to using angle grinders to replace exhaust systems. Mostly we reground brake drums, did other brake work, oil changes, tire mounting/balancing and such. The best was we had privileges–our own parking spots on campus, and the freedom to hop on down to Napa (where we got a discount) during school hours.

My dad had offered me his NUMMI-built Chevy Nova, but I wanted something special. And I don’t remember how it happened, but Marilyn offered me her Galaxie, caveat being it had been parked for a year as it had stopped running right. But it had a brand-new exhaust, she said, and halfway decent tires.

I went to see it, covered in a season’s worth of leaves in a backyard of her friend’s house and immediately fell in love. Black with a red vinyl interior, a white top, raised white letter Goodrich T/As mounted to Torino GT wheels. And a cracked windshield.

This was definitely a New York car, as the trunk was completely rusted-out, and one rust hole under the passenger footwell. No matter. It was my betrothed. I struck a deal, and had my mom’s AAA tow it to our house.

I wish my trunk looked this good!

My buddy Andy, who restored GTOs and had taught me night driving on his 318-equipped 84 Dodge Ram (with granny gear first!), came over to help me get it started. I’d gone to Buy Wise Auto Parts and bought jack stands and a trolley jack, a new battery, new sparkplugs, various other things you need to get a car going. We drained the oil, black as could be–and noticed the crankcase was holding about five quarts that shouldn’t have been there. Then we noticed there was nothing attached to the exhaust headers.

I called Marilyn from the wall-mounted Western Electric rotary on the basement phone jack. (Remember how you had to let the tension twirl off those cords by letting the receiver dangle? Anyway…) Was she sure there was an exhaust mounted? Yes, she said, she had the receipt. We were puzzled. It was gone. How? We didn’t know.

I went back out to the driveway, where Andy had gotten the oil filter on; we filled the crankcase with 10w30 and put the new battery in, along with some fresh gas. The accessory lights came on; everything seemed to work. I sat back and admired the dash. (And yes, I had fuzzy dice on it my entire time of ownership.)

We had fuel and spark. But she wouldn’t start. Andy took a look and decided the starter’s Bendix had failed. Back to the auto parts store we went, and got a rebuilt starter. The sun was going down fast (it was November), but we got the unit in, and lowered the car to the ground. I got behind the wheel, primed the carb, and….nothing. Turned out the neutral safety switch had broken. No matter. We got a new one and….

ROAR! There’s no way to describe an unmuffled FE engine. That big-block had a kick and the nosy neighbor (who loved to call the cops on my band when we rehearsed; we’ll just say his first name was Richard, yes?), came outside with his head scratching as we set the timing using the vintage Sears light Mr. Parker had given me.

All seemed copacetic (as Mr. Parker always said), aside from the loud but beautiful (to me) sound coming from those manifolds.We let her warm up a bit, then checked all the other parts. Replaced a few fuses. Proud of ourselves, we sat in the car, put the heater on, and smoked a joint.

I did some more wrenching, but the car needed more work to get it on the road proper. My mom called it “the planter” as it just sat there all winter. My friends and I would go out to the Gal and get high and run it for a while to keep things moving, talk about the stuff kids talk about. And there, I got the name from my favorite song by Jimi Hendrix at the time, “Night Bird Flying”, and my love of Alison Steele, “The Nightbird”, on 102.7 WNEW-FM. She was a legendary NYC overnight broadcaster. It was only a few months ago I learned that, apocryphally, Jimi wrote the song for her. And with the classic taillights shaped like jet exhausts, newly squared off in ’66, it sure looked like something flying though the night, even when parked.

I started doing some automotive archaeology; found a bunch of receipts from the original garage in New York City and other ephemera. My Gal was pretty stripped down, but had a power top, power brakes, and steering, and a front and rear speaker for the radio. Everything else was bottom-end, according to the catalog. I used to sit and look at the original ’66 brochure Marilyn had, and imagine how I would have equipped her if she’d been mine originally…

When the snow melted, I went to the DMV and got it registered, plus a fifteen-day permit to get the ol’ Gal street legal. Then I shopped around for a place that would make me an exhaust system, as I couldn’t find anything in stock in every order manual Mr. Parker had. The local Meineke had a great price for me on custom true duals, though, and I had her towed there. The job was great, and I picked up the car. God, did it look sweet.

But when I started her up, a racket like you wouldn’t believe came from the top end of the engine.

I brought her down to Shop and Mr. Parker took a good look. The hydraulic lifters were all out of whack, and through conversations with Marilyn and Andy we figured out her ex had vengefully overfilled the car with oil, blowing the lifters, and, we assumed, had stolen the new exhaust system before I bought the car — a theory proven when I ran into him at a party and he offered to sell me a “slightly used” dual exhaust that (ahem) coincidentally was juuuust right for the Gal!

Really, the engine needed a proper teardown. But it still ran well, despite the racket. Mr. Parker hooked it up to the sniffer, and played with the carb jets and timing, got it to run nice and clean. I got it down to the Montclair inspection station to get a red “Rejected” sticker, as it still needed a windshield, but that sticker gave me a bunch more days to sort it out.

I remember that day well as I had just turned on the AM radio and slipping past the sports and Christian channels, heard “Incense and Peppermints” come through on a normally right-wing talk station, 770 AM.

For a second thought I’d just slipped through a time portal. Then the voice of radio host Curtis Sliwa–a founder of the Guardian Angels and a real New York character–came on, saying that Timothy Leary had just passed, giving a sarcastic eulogy for him. I turned it off. I just wished he’d played more music.

Oy, those rims.

I had a street-legal car! I was so excited. I drove all around that day, feeling out the power steering (not bad at all; I still miss the road feel of that car), and learning the hard way how quickly power drum brakes with no proportioning valve will lock up a car. I dropped the top, rolled the windows up, and put on the heater, filled it up with 99¢/gallon Clinton-era gas, and just…cruised. All night. I was the happiest I’d ever been.

The brakes were weird. They were self-adjusting, but I wound up putting it on the lift and adjusting them often. The shoes would often stick and I’d have to pull up the pedal to release them. We tried a new master cylinder, resurfacing the drums, and replaced the shoes, did everything you need to do to make this antiquated, foolish system work. I got it working for a long stretch, but if I left the car alone for more than a couple of days, it’d start up again, and I learned after my first massive fishtail into a lightpole to (ahem) tread lightly.

The car ran this way for a week or so, then something started to clunk badly and she wouldn’t start. I got a referral to the garage in the area that still worked on cars as old as mine; a pair of crusty old bearded brothers who were pretty much the New Jersey version of Click and Clack.

They looked into it and it seemed the drivers’ side rocker arm had split in two and the cheapo rebuilt starter I’d put in was just not good. They took pity on me, and didn’t charge me a lot, but definitely gave me an earful about driving around in a car with the jankiness of the Nightbird. They fixed it up, I got it back, went to Safelite and got my windshield installed. (They had it in stock; who’da thunk?) Then to the inspection station, where she passed with flying colors.

The next day, on my way to work, I was barely down the hill before smoke came from the hood. I stopped the car, freaked out, and a neighbor called the FD. They opened the hood and laughed at the burnt spaghetti underneath. I ignorantly hadn’t changed out the spark plug wires or any of the other electrical system consumables. Seems now that I had a starter that actually worked and reasonably modern plugs, the old plug wiring just couldn’t handle it. But the starter, battery, and distributor/points were fine.

The next day, I went to the auto parts store and this time bought a genuine Motorcraft ignition wire set and all the little parts I needed. There’s something else I did, but I cannot remember. After that, it ran really well, albeit noisy. But there’s nothing like piling 6 friends in your big-block convertible and cruising down two-lanes all over Essex County, New Jersey. I had a little boom box and a pile of tapes, and kept it tuned to the classic rock station.

I loved the color-keyed seatbelts.

I wanted to take a road trip, so I went out to Bethlehem, PA, to visit a pal. The car pulled to the left incredibly but I could get it to track true. At 70 there was a thumping from the right front wheel, later diagnosed as a bent rim. Nothing I could do about that.

Driving home after the weekend, right after the gorgeous sunset that paints the Lehigh Valley pink and orange as you pass into New Jersey, a bad snow hit. The Nightbird was steady; I remember hitting the brights and that making the snow visibility worse. But I got home, averaging 12 mpg or so.

I kept working on the car and kept it mostly local, with dreams of restoring it. After the trip I tried to get it aligned and found out the ball joints were shot. At the time it exceeded my budget to fix it right, more than I’d paid for the car. So I just bought a set of cheap front tires and let them wear out.

That summer was so much fun. I polished what lacquer was left on the car and took her to prom, opening the passenger door for my sweetie like ya do.

My buddy Gardner had a 77 T-Bird and we’d drag race at night (guess who won?). We all went camping. Top down cruising all summer long. But by fall, the front tires had worn down to the steel, the dash lights wouldn’t work, the engine had developed some sort of other lifter issue, the brakes got worse, and I didn’t have any more cash to fix it. My mechanics said it was just a lost cause. But I still drove it: I kept the car local, rotated the tires, picked up mismatched tires from the free pile at auto shop, just did that over and over. Until it became obvious that I was driving a money pit I loved but couldn’t afford to fix properly.

I drove it til early spring, then reluctantly put an ad in the Newark Star-Ledger, saying I would only sell it to someone who would restore it. Two brothers who claimed to own an auto restoration shop came by, they gave me a thousand in cash, and I watched my first love roll down the street. They gave me their number and told me to get in touch, they’d restore it over the winter. I gave them the NOS carpet, vinyl, and other parts I collected. I do believe they made something out of it, but I never wrote the VIN down, and as such, while I often search for it on registries and such (as I mentioned it was definitely a custom order, typical of Ford in the 60s, and I’d recognize it in a second), I’ve never found it. All I have left of it are the blue plates she was issued in 1987: GBF-27E, Great Big Ford. And a Ford catalog from 1966.

I hope she’s out there somewhere making some other teenager happy, cruising at 45 with the top down, windows up, heater on, a sweetie close on the split bench seat, on a two-lane New Jersey night. It’s what she was meant to do.

When I was a kid, there were two ’66 Galaxies running around my neighborhood, a really nice blue hardtop that some kid later bought and drove into the ground, and a real beater that two young girls drove that had a rotten frame and a pink paint job. That one didn’t last too long. There was also a nice ’66 Chevelle and my beater ’65 Mustang hanging around. Mya, you and I are about the same age, and it’s funny how back when we were 18, seeing a ’60s car in nearly daily use, even in the rust belt, wasn’t totally unheard of.

On an unrelated note, the movie “Wonder Boys” with Michael Douglas prominently featured a Vintage Burgundy ’66 Galaxie Convertible, and I always liked that car.

I totally freaked when I saw that movie — that Gal was equipped almost identically to mine and it is not uncommon to see east coast vintage iron in movie shots. Until there’s a daytime shot and you can really see the colors, I was convinced it was mine for a minute.

It was astounding the numbers of vintage 60s and 70s iron we had in our parking lots–air-cooled VWs, 289 Mustangs, Lido-era T-Birds and Marquises…Mr. Selden the art teacher had a killer TR7 convertible…a teacher’s ’82-ish Volvo 240 manual, which became my pet as I was the only one who knew how to find reverse in it!! I also remember our postman in town running his 1960 or so Comet or Valiant (I can’t remember, also black and red) until he retired in about 2000. I asked him about it and he said it was the first car he bought new; never any reason to get rid of it…Mr. Parker bought a rare burgundy ’96 LT1 Impala SS to replace his aging Roadmaster…my buddy had a killer 78 Lincoln Mark coupe, which he restored at age 17. Wound up getting a scholarship to Lincoln Tech and then became a architect. Auto shop was magic for all of us. The last year I was there we had a 71 or so Eldorado in as a shop car–one day we finally got it running then smelled gas; the electric aux fuel pump some jackass installed was in the on position and we didn’t know it. Yuck.

I grew up in neighboring Union, NJ and have similar memories of the early 90’s cruising the long straightaways of Wyoming Avenue, Valley Street, the tight S turns of South Orange Avenue by South Mountain Reservation and the Livingston Mall. And of course, having the Sanford Brothers on Irvington Avenue work on your car! Ah, the memories!

I remember seeing small-but-steady numbers of 1960s cars on the roads in the West Palm Beach, FL, area throughout the 1990s. Daily drivers! By the time I moved from crowded WPB to a small town in GA in July 2008 the times were few and far between when I’d see cars of the sixties — and by then cars of the ’70s, too — on the highway. I wish time didn’t always have to march on so quickly . . .

In 1972 I bought a 1966 Galaxie 500 2DR HT with a 289 from a fellow worker for $300.00… it had the extra nice wheel covers like the black convert seen here.
His father bought it new, was powder blue color. The car was in very good cond. without dents, rust or scratches and ran fine. The only problem was some wear on the drivers seat, so I had a full set of custom fit seat covers made and installed for about $55.00 in Berwyn,IL My wife loved the car up until a woman slid on ice and plowed into the back end while on her way home from work.. we sold it for $100.00

I actually saw a ’66 Galaxie 500 convertible while stuck in traffic in Peabody, MA yesterday on my way to an exercise session. It was in burgundy w/a damaged driver’s side rear quarter panel, but looked OK otherwise.

When I was a teenager, the number of us kids still at home was dwindling so my father traded his 64 Country Squire for a 66 LTD 4 door. That LTD was dark green with a parchment vinyl roof and light/medium green nylon tricot covered seats (I think that was the 1st year….and maybe the last, for that upholstery fabric.) Our LTD only had a 289 and it didn’t have the sportier, and much nicer, wheel covers this car has.

For some reason, the 66 full-sized Ford doesn’t SEEM to have been as popular in my area as the 67 would be. In the late 60s several folks who hadn’t bought a new car in quite a while bought 67 Galaxies, LTDs, and wagons….though NOT as many Squires as non-Squires.

Me? I strongly prefer the 65 full-sized Ford, whatever the trim or bodystyle. But do admire the 66 black/red/white convertible featured here. The 390 would be “icing on the cake” as far as I’m concerned.

In my neighborhood is a full-size 1966 Ford. But it’s under a car cover all the time…so long the cover fabric is starting to sun-rot (this is California, so presumably there isn’t a pile of rust flakes under the car). Some day maybe I’ll see what that car cover is concealing. I can only tell it’s a 1966 Ford by the shape of the tail lights and rear quarter under the car cover after it rains.

Your story about the brakes jogged a memory. My 1967 Camaro, a plain-Jane strippo…with a base V8-Powerglide, an AM radio and power steering the only options…would violently lock up the right rear wheel on the first cold stop each day. I looked over that brake time and again. It looked fine. Readjusted it, but to no avail. Finally I followed some advice, looked at the other brake, and figured out that the problem was in THAT brake, the left one. The axle seal was seeping hypoid fluid and the brake shoes were oily. On that first stop the left brake would merrily slip on the oily shoes, while under equal pressure the right brake would lock up. Once the left brake warmed up on that first stop, it would be OK for the day. The car still had 75 miles left on its 5/50 powertrain warranty (my Dad had bought it new to replace his 1962 Chevy II, ANOTHER automotive disaster) so back to the dealer it went. The axle seal had worked loose due to a too-long axle shaft (the service manager was glad it wasn’t a cracked axle housing). The dealer insisted that they could not replace the brake shoes under the warranty (“wear parts”) so I had to pay for that (got refunded when I got pissed and complained in person to the GM zone office, about 20 miles away).

I’m not saying that was the brake problem you had, but servo-type drum brakes had so many foibles, and the servo action amplified them. Another would be that if you bought low-buck $5 brake shoes, the cheap organic friction material and crummy binding resins would crack under the heat of braking, and since one side would crack first, that brake would grab, the grabbing amplified by the servo action, and the car would abruptly pull to that side.

Tears. Actual tears. What an awesome read for a homesick Jersey ex-pat over morning coffee on the last birthday of his forties. I grew up with WNEW, The Night bird, and likely those same unnamed North Jersey roads, and this was just perfection. Thank you.

Great story! As a former ’67 Galaxie 500 390 coupe owner, I can relate to a lot here. I owned my car in probably the same years you had yours. Oldies rock AM sounded cool through those old AM radios, as bad as they are by today’s stereo standards.

My car did not have power brakes, but the more I read about these old systems, that was not such a bad thing on ’60s drum brake cars. While it required more pedal effort – easy to get used to for a healthy guy in his early 20s, I don’t recall lock up problems of any sort, and they guided the car to safe and straight stops in normal situations.

My car succumbed to the infamous Ford frame rot of the ’60s, and as I read, I kept dreading that you would say the same thing. The rest of my car had been kept up pretty well by earlier owners, and the body, floor, and trunk floor were all in quite good shape. The frame proved to be terminal bone cancer for my ownership, the buyer had plans to find a solution. I hope he did.

Excellent job illustrating your story with pictures! While the Web is a treasure trove, it takes a lot of work to find the right pictures to make it work from a technical standpoint, as well as having good pictures that properly enhance your points.

Also yeah, I wished my car hadn’t had power drums. Major fail on the automakers for putting that idea forth. The brakes worked best when the car wasn’t running (like if I coasted a hill to save gas, which I did often!).

Mya, what a great read – especially with all of the period details, from store accounts, music, to the last of the rotary phones.

It’s amazing to read all of the memories of these cars as old. I only remember them as new! My aunt got a new 66 LTD coupe, black top over Vintage Burgundy. I absolutely loved that car (and her – she was a total sweetheart and let teen-aged me drive it!). It was only a 289 but such a quiet, smooth, stylish car with that beautiful concave rear window and stunningly elegant interior, replete with “panty cloth” upholstery, the fake wood trim, and red and white lights in the doors. 66 is my favorite full-sized Ford and I love every detail, including those taillights.

Looking back today, that dash brochure picture you included is kind of amazing as so many of the options look kind of makeshift, hanging below the dash in a haphazard fashion. My aunt’s car was similar to your convertible in that in addition to the LTD standard features (289, auto, PS), it only had two-tone paint, PB, white walls, and a rear seat speaker for the radio.

My buddy’s dad had a ’66 289 auto. stripper that we would ride to our summer job from Plainfield to Newark NJ in the late 60’s. Unlike your outstanding specimen, our ride was nothing special, but solid and reliable as best as I can recall.
Regarding WNEW-FM..we always had the dial glued to 102.7. Besides Allison, do you remember Rosco, Scott Muni, and Zacharly? Great times for cars and early rock.
Cheers.

hey, i grew up in your home town in the 70’s. in fact i learned basic auto mechanics by taking a night school class there with my dad in that same voc-tech garage classroom. my brother even had galaxie 500 convertible rust bucket. his was a ’69 ltd in yellow.

loved your story. a very accurate description of the homeland. one question: how fast did you dare to take the car on the mountain ess curves of south orange avenue?

I don’t think I ever pushed the Nightbird past fifty. I used to routinely run my GTI and Bimmer up to sixty, and once hit seventy-ish on the long straight rushing to St. Barnabas Hospital in my mom’s B3 Passat sportswagon (she’s a bit of a leadfoot). I love that road.

you’re smarter than me. i pushed my luck way too many times on that road. i was once a passenger while an older cool kid drove his daddy’s 450sel to about 90 on the stretch of south orange ave that goes through the reservation. i was sure i was going to die. a friend of my brother almost did and was in the hospital for a long time after he totaled his datsun fairlady there.

it’s funny how much things were still the same for you in the nineties, i remember alison steele, signing for local charge accounts and the maplewood theater very clearly from the seventies.

On things being the same in the 90’s … You’re right. The town stayed mostly untouched. It’s one of the things that make me feel like a time traveler a bit…so few of my peers age-wise (I was born in ’78) in other locales have anywhere close to the same cultural reference overlap. Growing up there really shaped who I am and the values I hold dear. It’s also enabled me to find common ground with so many people. It’s like I experienced this incredible piece of prewar 20th-century Americana that many other people my age never got to see. And of course the greatest generation of rock and roll FM DJs. Alison was and will remain a legend. Glad we still have FUV, John Platt, Ron Olesko…

Maplewood changed so much so quickly after 1995, and ’98 was when the party was over due to the influx of inflated property taxes, the direct NYC train, bank consolidation, multiplexing the theatre, chain stores, and change in local government. I used to buy stuff at the mill, my friends worked there, etc. The hardware store closing and the Maplewood Pharmacy opening up a hardware section. The Five and Dime folding soon after. Many of the little stores changing.

It’s amazing it stayed mostly the same until 1998. It’s still a cool town with many of the same faces but not what we experienced anymore, which is sad. I’m in San Francisco now. Still some pockets out in this area that remind me of where I came from, despite constant yuppification.

My mom is still living in Maplewood, hanging on to our little house, kicking ass as an architect doing historic preservation, and driving those damn S curves in her Mazdaspeed 3 at faster speeds than I will ever dare to!

Lucky your friends were ok. I know a lot of other folks with similar stories. I did lose some members of my friend group on those long stretches of road going through the reservation; not on the S curves but on the road that snakes off toward Millburn. Sobered me up real quick, literally and figuratively, when that happened.

What remains a shame is the closing of the local voc-tech program. Nowhere else in the area could you be on a mechanic track and still take fencing and act in a school play. As an artist who very much understands the value of labor, it saddens me greatly we couldn’t save the shop programs. A lot of future architects, mechanics, artisans, and scientists came out of those classrooms.

Although I left Essex County almost 40 years ago, as a teen, I cruised all the great roads in your (former) neck of the woods (and still get nervous thinking about the Montclair DMV inspection station failing another one of my $250-$400 Little British Cars.). Thanks so much for the memories and hope you find some time to explore some of the great roads
in the SF Bay Area.

Thanks Jeff! There’s definitely some great roads in Essex County and surrounds…there’s a long stretch of 24 going west from Morristown to Summit where it’s dead straight. I used to do high-speed runs there to (ahem) check the alignment of my cars. I’m still trying to find all the little loops and canyons in the Bay, and the fast B-roads… I did take the E30 Cabrio down to Big Sur for a night drive on PCH a few weeks ago and it was incredible to be on that highway with NO traffic, in a great-handling car that’s tuned perfectly, taking those banked corners with my brights on. I felt like Steve McQueen.

What a fantastic story–you lived out what I only fantasized about doing (my dream Galaxie was a ’64 rather than a ’66 though). Lack of money for a decent one, lack of mechanical know-how and no auto shop at my school to provide it. Still, I can sympathize, and I remember the times well–we’re not far off in age (I was 15 in ’95 so got my learner’s permit that year too). And I think we had that same rotary phone, in white. Even in the late 80’s it was a bit of a relic–I had friends who tried to use it to call home and had no idea how to use it. Grandpa worked for Western Electric for years so I’m sure it was one of theirs.

Same part of Jersey as my parents also; Mom grew up in Fair Lawn and Dad in Saddle Brook, and they lived in Lake Hiawatha after marrying. Moved down south before I came along, but I feel like I know the place from a thousand stories and a few visits.